Senses

5: Sensory Overload

Five minutes after Bruce gave Peter sleeping pills, he was passed out, cuddled against Tony. Tony didn't really mind being Peter's pillow, but Bruce needed to speak with him and the rest of his team, so they had to relocate themselves for fear of waking Peter up.

"I know what happened with Peter," Bruce started once they were all in the kitchen. "It's called sensory overload. It occurs when one or more of a person's senses experience over-simulation. Peter says his school was having a school assembly that got loud. That's what caused him to freak out."

Everyone was quiet, except for Clint who was raiding the fridge.

"Why was he unconscious when Tony got to him?" Sam asked.

Bruce sighed. "My best guess would be that he passed out from pain."

Clint stood up from his crouching position in front of the fridge. "Wait, okay, so if one of us," He used the whip cream bottle he was holding to point to everyone, "were to get a sensory overload, would we pass out?"

"No. We can get sensory overload, but not as badly as Peter. The thing is with Peter, is that he already has heightened senses. Enhanced vision and hearing, things like that. See, if things get too loud for him, it hurts his ears. But if he's experiencing sensory overload, things are extremely loud for him. That's why he was crying, we were yelling and I don't really want to imagine the kind of pain it caused him."

Tony felt guilty. How could he have hurt Peter? He would never purposefully hurt him. Maybe he could make Peter something to make up for it?

"But that doesn't make any sense." Natasha said. "He was talking like he couldn't form a basic sentence."

"Yes, well, I'm not an expert on this matter, but I believe that is because his brain was working very hard to comprehend what he was hearing or seeing that it was hard for him form sentences." Bruce replied.

Tony felt terrible. How could he have overlooked this? Looking back, he had seen Peter flinch at loud noises, he had seen him cover his ears whenever Tony dropped something heavy. He had caused Peter pain and he didn't even realize it.

"Anyone else feel guilty?" Steve said. A chorus of 'yes's followed.

Bruce gazed at Tony, noticing that he was zoning out. "Tony? Are you alright?" Everyone looked at Tony.

"Y'know, Peter would sometimes ask me to turned down my music when he was working in the lab. Do you know how I responded? I turned up the music and called him a killjoy. I had no idea that it was hurting him. None of us did. Why didn't we notice? We've all seen him flinch at loud noises. We've all seen him cover his ears. We've all seen him struggle and we've done absolutely nothing about it." Tony said remorsefully.

"Tony-" Steve started, but Tony wasn't having it.

"No, Steve. Don't. Don't say it's not anyone's fault. Don't say that we couldn't have done something about it because we could've. Dammit Steve, we are his team. We're supposed to look out for him, supposed to protect him, and we didn't. And now, Peter's hurt. And it is our fault."